Stress and money seem to run hand in hand in circles together around us, much like my 2 year old, arms waving and screaming. The holiday season has apparently gone and squared this (stress + money + holidays = (stress + money)^2) for some reason. Apparently, as westerners, we like to amp up the stressfulness of our daily lives while celebrating our friends, family and what is otherwise supposed to be a rather joyous season filled with “fun” occasions.
Oh well. Money and stress were the starting point for this post and so I’ll come back to that. Investing creates a tremendous amount of stress because the responsibility of managing money for growth and having others expect us to do that well is rather a challenging thing. So, this week’s external influence is a piece from the Harvard Business Review on managing stress through mindfulness (read “meditation”).
A Simple Way to Stay Grounded in Stressful Moments by Leah Weiss from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business runs through a list of relatively simple, easy to remember things we can do to “take it down a notch” when we feel things are threatening to spin out of control, whether that is realizing a major loss on a position or feeling a sudden and overwhelming urge to throttle cousin Wilma for her “observations” on good parenting.
Mindfulness and meditation have a important role at IOI as well. Erik and Lee (one of our advisors) are both active “sitters”. They try to spend time in silent mediation each day. Both of them believe this habit has major benefits for them – both in investing and in their respective responsibilities outside IOI.
Have a read! You’ll be the better investor (and person) for it.
Namaste –
In the meantime, Invest Intelligently.